


Revelation and Reinforcement

by allegoricalrose (SilentStars)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-13 02:36:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2133894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentStars/pseuds/allegoricalrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine/Rose: Sometimes you wait for someone to open up; other times, a more salient reward schedule is required.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revelation and Reinforcement

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt: 'accepting and differences'

The moon is still rising in the twilight sky, shrouded with the lace of grey clouds and smug in its starry jewelry. 

He's glaring at it. 

"I knew there was something wrong with that map. I saw a mischievous gleam in that man's eye as he drew it. I'm sorry, Rose, this wasn't supposed to happen."

She only smiles between closed lips and lays back in the blades of grass, already glistening with the early evening's dew. "I don't mind."

"You don't mind?" He gapes at her for only a second before composing his face into his usual grouchy mask. 

"Nope. It's beautiful out here; we don’t get much of a chance to sit back and relax, to actually take in the settings of our adventures. We're usually running the whole time. 'S like we're camping." She reaches her arms up and folds them behind her head, props one ankle up on her knee. 

He looks away, stares intently at the mossy stonework slowly eroding away through time. "We can set off by foot once the sun's up in the morning. Shouldn't take us more than a few hours to get back to the TARDIS, but still. That guide little more than left us for dead out here."

"I'm sure it wasn't intentional. Maybe we just missed a turn back there?"

"We most certainly did not. He deliberately misled us, trapping us out here in the moorlands in the middle of the night."

"Still, could be worse. We kinda have shelter and it's summer." Rose worries her lip suddenly. "Unless…are there, like, wild animals out here?"

"Nah, maybe some deer at the very worst." The Doctor squints at the map again in the fading light. "The funny thing is that this is where they were directing us, this run-down old manor house or castle or whatever it is… It's clearly nowhere near the TARDIS; about as far as we could possibly be given the distance we walked. I knew I should have trusted my instincts."

Rose snorts quietly and turns her head away.

The Doctor narrows his eyes and tenses the muscles in his neck. "What was that for?"

"What was what for?" she asks innocently.

"That snort. Are you disparaging my instincts?"

"More like surprised that you _have_ instincts. Thought you were all superior and logical."

"Of course I have instincts, don't be daft. No species would survive without them."

She rises up on her elbows and watches him silently for three point seven seconds longer than he's comfortable with. "What other instincts do you have?"

"What other…Rose, are you just trying to wind me up? Because I'm tired, neither of us have slept more than an hour over the past few days, and—"

"Not taking the mickey, I'm just curious," she cuts in softly. She's looking away from him again and his nose flares at the sudden tautness in the night breeze, the smell of wildflowers and moss and metallic tension.

"Why?" 

"You're always such a mystery. I know almost nothing about you; your species, your similarities and differences from me. You know everything about humans, more than I do even. And I want to know more about you. I like hearing about you."

If she turns her head she won't be able to miss the discomfit and fearful wonder grafted across his face, but she doesn't and he allows it to linger. "I'm just an old man. The last of an effectively extinct species that mostly deserves that status. I'm a tattered old corpse; it's you humans that are the beautiful mystery. So alive and inquisitive, yet to fully comprehend the vastness and majesty of the universe around you. On the brink of discovery, on the edge of so much more…"

She closes her eyes and he knows it's to give him a modicum of safety, the illusion that if there's no eye contact, he's only speaking to the starry firmament. "That's not what I see. You're not some final molecule of decay: you're a rarity, a twinkle of hope. And not just for your species: for the entire universe. You're the light flashing in the stormy sea. Who wouldn't want to know everything there is to know about the man who has saved us all so many times and is still just a man: leather and denim and avoidance…"

His throat is too thick to swallow so he clenches his jaw instead. 

"Tell me one thing about you? About Time Lords?"

He toys with a loose thread on his jeans. What can he tell her? That he has the same instincts as a human? That his entire body buzzes whenever she's near, that the touch of her skin makes his fingers crave more, that the sight of her long-sleeved t-shirt rising ever so slightly up her torso and exposing a sliver of blank canvas makes him want to paint unending circles across her stomach? 

"I can hold my breath longer than you," he finally blurts out. "I have a respiratory bypass, it allows me to stop respiration for a short time and harvest oxygen through other sources."

She rolls over and faces him finally, a slow smile blossoming across her lips. "Really?"

"Yup." He closes his eyes for only a millisecond to steel himself. "Now tell me something about you."

She bites her lip and looks off into the distance, thinking. "You know everything about my body." He shudders and is glad her gaze is elsewhere. "I mean, about human physiology. Otherwise you wouldn't know to tell me what's different."

"True. Tell me something I don't know about you then, Rose Tyler." 

He holds his breath and it's just as well; the moment's intimacy suffuses the humid air and he can practically taste its heady tang flooding his gustatory receptors, threatening to overwhelm his mind and brain and body and churn them into a grey matter soup and there's not really a distinction between his mind and his brain and his body and they're all hers and they're all spotlighting on her as if she's the entire universe and she is and she doesn't know it. They're only talking about general anatomical differences but the encroaching darkness in the sky and the retreating heaviness in his periphery and her gentle voice give him an out-of-body experience, as if he's watching himself being smothered by copious metaphysical layers of meaning and he wants to run and he wants to lose himself in her warmth.

When he returns to himself, he notices her watching him again. She hasn't replied and he suspects that, even under the guise of innocuous conversation, he's asking too much of her. She's the most amazing human he's ever met but even she must be off-put by their differences, by what he's sure his eyes scream out to her every single minute of every single day despite the neutral expression he attempts to stretch across the rest of his face. 

The clouds in front of the moon dissipate and her skin is bathed in white moonlight. 

"Show me your respiratory bypass?" She's not blinking as her eyes flicker back and forth between his.

"My…"

"Hold your breath and I'll tell you something you don't know about me."

His chest feels heavy but his hearts tingle as he complies without further protest. Sucking in a lungful of air, he clamps his lips closed as she rises to her knees and moves in front of him. Her eyes don't leave his, even when they widen.

She moves closer, closing her eyes only when she's inches away from his face. Her lips keep propelling forward and his push forward of their own accord, as if they're induced by the magnetism of her mouth. The kiss is slow, achingly tender, and he feels his fingers begin to tremble at his sides. They're still shaking as he drags one hand up to brush along her cheek and _damn_ he's glad for that respiratory bypass right now because he wouldn't be able to draw a breath if he tried. 

When she pulls back, the loss of her lips results in physical pain and he's unable to stop himself chasing after her. He's kissing her smile now, stretched lips and smooth teeth, and if he could really control time it would be to halt this moment and repeat it indefinitely.

She turns her head slightly and pants against his cheek. "There's one thing you didn't know about me."

It's not a whimper that escapes his lips: it's not. 

"Tell me something else about you and I'll tell you another secret."

The air discharges out of his chest in one violent burst and he manages to drag his eyes away from her lips and up to her darkening eyes. "I…I'm a telepath. A tactile telepath, I can connect with other minds through touch." She blinks. "I don't, though, I'd never—"

He can't remember what he was saying when she darts forward and wraps her lips around a patch of skin to the side of his neck. His eyes flutter closed and he groans when he feels her teeth lightly bite down. "I've always wanted to do that," she murmurs into his skin and the vibration of her lips sends white-hot blood down his spine to pool between his legs. 

"Rose," he moans and somehow he manages to locate his hands and grip her hips. 

"What else?"

For a few seconds he has no idea what she's talking about, especially as he tugs her forward and she's flush against his torso. She tuts and sinks down to the grass, angling her hips away from him again. 

Faced with such salient rewards and punishments, he rapidly works out what she wants. "Two hearts?"

"Already knew that." His fingers flex into her side again and she reflexively spasms forward once before puffing out a loud breath. 

"My planet…my planet was called Gallifrey." She softens down into his arms and moves to straddle him. He's forced to move one arm behind him to keep himself propped up but the other arm is free to ghost up her ribs and settle in the damp curls at the nape of her neck and, oh, when she rolls her hips against his straining jeans he gives up any pretense of holding himself back and thrusts up with a deep-seated groan. Even through two layers of denim he can feel the heat of her centre grinding down against his engorged and aching cock and it's harder than it's ever been in this body or probably the past few too and his jeans have never felt more of a prison than now and he wants to bury himself inside her folds and hide there forever. 

But too soon she stills, her eyes hooded, and tilts her head to the side, waiting. 

"Allergic to aspirin," he squeaks and immediately moves recaptures her mouth. Her tongue glides along the seam of his eager lips this time and he parts them with a sigh of relief. He lets her explore his mouth without hindrance for a few seconds but he can't hold himself passive for long and pushes himself up to sitting and shifts their balance so that it's _him_ hovering over her now and it's _him_ conquering the ultimate conquest of her mouth and it's _him_ lowering her backwards in the grass and rutting against her with needy and inelegant movements. 

His goddess, his reason for living holds herself still and submissive for only a minute before clamping down on his lower lip and simultaneously scraping a nail down his stomach and under the waistband of his trousers. 

"Rose…" he pleads and she smirks. Her hand is held inert at the jean button and she raises her eyebrows at him. 

"I love you. I love you," he chokes out and those words are enough to make him freeze and forget all the urgency radiating out from under her hand. Anxiously, he meets her eye; her mouth falls slack. 

His hearts are pounding out a beat too furiously rapid to be healthy and he feels every square centimetre where they touch. The tops of his thighs against the inside of hers, his constrained erection between her legs, the inside of his forearms brushing against—

She smiles. 

It’s one of those glorious, dawn-is-breaking, war-is-over, pyrotechnics-exploding-in-the-night, chest-clenching, sun-emerging-from-behind-clouds kinds of smiles and if he lives a billion years he'll never allow it further away than left centre of his mind's eye.

"I love _you_ ," she whispers and he first kisses away his tears that fall onto her cheeks and then the wetness streaming out her own eyes.

Give and take is over. Games of reward and punishment irrelevant. Show and tell complete, unless it's just show and he'll show her, he'll show her for the rest of her life. 

Years later, decades and centuries and millennia later he doesn't remember how their clothes disappeared; he's not quite sure how they managed to disrobe while refusing to release each other; doesn’t know if their socks remained on or off; is unable to recall the path his fingers took to slip between her folds. But he remembers with striking clarity how wet she was for him and the taste of her on his fingers and the searing need to no longer exist as independent entities and the sound of his name on her lips and feeling of sliding into her heat for the first time. 

It's friction, it's temperature, it's tactile stimulation, and it's hormones. And it's more, so much more than their sum: it's completion, it's home, it's comfort and joy and peace and rising and gasping and pleading and contracting and fluttering and— 

It's flying and it's falling. It's louder than the big bang and it's more silent than the end of the universe. 

Her eyes are closed beneath him, her limbs boneless and he collapses beside her, hooking a weakened arm around her waist to prevent slipping out of her. He wants to sleep for weeks, his eyes are already drifting shut, but he forces them open for a little bit longer. She's sweaty, her hair in clumps plastered to her cheeks and neck, her skin cool and clammy. She's never been as radiant.

"Rose," he whispers.

"Hmmmph," she mumbles at great effort, already half-asleep. 

"One more fact?"

She hums and wiggles more deeply into his arms. 

"No refractory period."

Her eyes snap open and a lazy smile climbs up her face. "I asked the guide to give us wrong directions."


End file.
